70-210 f4 (old) expectations

I have just bought a digital body and - apart from the 17-85mm IS which I bought with it - for the time being I am sticking with the old lenses I used for film.

I have owned the 70-210mm f4 since about 1991 - I bought it at the same time as my old eos1 and have been very pleased with the results. Trying it on the new body I am less impressed - seems to lack contrast and be less sharp than I remember. Strangely - a cheapo 28-300 Cosina which I acquired accidentally about 6 years ago when it came with a spare body I bought, seems to perform better at about 135mm in mid-range apertures than the Canon. I really want the 70-200 2.8l IS - perhaps I am subliminally condemning my lens to justify an earlier purchase?

Has anyone had any experiences with the old non-USM 70-210 f4 lens on digital? I would be grateful for any views

Photos from digital cameras often need a little bit of work, for example play with the contrast, saturation, and sharpening. If you shoot JPG you can tweak it in the camera by altering the parameters, set sharpening to max perhaps. If that doesn't work take the photo into photoshop and run the unsharp mask filter on it, say at 100/2/2.

If that doesn't help post a couple of samples from each lens.

Thanks for your suggestions
I have been playing with RAW and also JPG's with different parameters. I am nowhere near the stage where everything is second nature so I am fiddling with settings constantly as part of the learning process.
This forum is partly to blame - every time I browse it I find some other great idea to experiment with.

I think your idea of samples is a good one and to keep it fair I will do a locked off tripod test - framing something as near identically as I can for each lens and then shoot with exactly the same settings.

I have the 70-210 f3.5-4.5 which pretty much the same as yours and it preforms well with my 20D.

Here's a pic I took with it, a little curves in PS2 and minimal sharpen

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I snagged one of these cheap after I picked up my 350 too. Its not a terrible lens.

These are right from the camera with only resizing.

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Thanks again everyone
Some good shots here - makes me want to persevere with this lens. I will shoot some comparisons of something simple over the weekend to try and work out why I can't see much difference with the old Cosina - obviously the wider aperture on the Canon is nice but I think the Cosina focuses marginally faster - I find the Canon seems to hunt a bit.
It may be that the Cosina (which I've never really used before) is better than I expect. I just assumed that a lens with that range (28-300) and from a little known manufacturer wasn't going to be up to much.

Yeah, I'll give you that, the AF on the Canon isn't fast and does tend to hunt. I find it gets confused sometimes and will do the full range hunt which is annoying. I still have no real complaints for a $50 lens though.